Urban review: Lloyd, Lessons in Love

The best cuts on Lloyd Polite's second album, 2007's Street Love, perfected a particularly dreamy strain of lovers' R&B; on Lessons In Love, he continues to mine this fertile territory. Lyrically, Polite rarely strays far from a seducer's template, but the way in which he sells the cliche is compelling. Soft of voice and light of touch, Polite is a languid, subtle performer who invests his mellifluous sweet nothings with an ambivalent distance - shimmering just out of reach. Sometimes singer and song fade away too much, but more often this has the effect of heightening emotion and tantalising the listener: backed by a quietly looped Paid in Full sample, Girls Around the World is an exquisite summer jam, while the freestyle beats and house piano of I'm Wit It prove excellent foils for Polite's delicately drifting croon.